Clearly Defined Goals

This blog post is taken from my book Golden Nuggets, and to begin with, let me ask you, “If you were driving your car down the highway and you encountered a thick blanket of fog, what would you do?”

I’m going to guess that you’d probably slow down – and I think that traveling through life without clearly defined goals can be compared to driving in fog.

The following story is a good reminder that it’s important to have clearly defined goals.

One morning in July of 1952, Florence Chadwick waded into the waters off of Catalina Island, intending to swim to the California coast, which was more than 20 miles away.

Although Florence was an experienced swimmer, the fog was so thick that she could hardly see the boat that carried her trainer.

She swam for more than fifteen hours, and all she could see was the water, and as a result, she quit swimming when she was only a half-mile from her goal.

In a later interview, Florence admitted that it wasn’t the cold or exhaustion that caused her to fail in her attempt to swim the Catalina Channel.

It was the fog… and in a similar manner, when we’re no longer able to visualize our goal, then we too, will quit.

Everyone needs hope, and everyone needs to have goals that they can see.

The next time that you’re tempted to quit, keep this story in mind and “swim one more stroke.”

Victory just might be around the next bend, so don’t quit.